


The Seabed and the Sun

by weirdmilk



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Injury, M/M, Major Character Injury, Oikawa Went to Shiratorizawa, Ushijima being an absolute boi, bittersweet fluff essentially
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-03 22:49:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14006544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weirdmilk/pseuds/weirdmilk
Summary: After news of his career-ending knee injury spreads, Oikawa Tooru receives a text from someone he thought he'd left behind ten years previously: Iwaizumi Hajime.He doesn't want to pretend their separation is for the best, anymore. So he replies.





	The Seabed and the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> I started this as a counterpoint to my other long(ish) AU iwaoi - but then decided to just make it something separate, but this is why there are similar themes throughout!  
> also SORRY i marked this as F/M first by mistake (it's not)

Oikawa doesn’t tell anyone about the end of his career, but the news travels regardless. It spreads slowly and quietly, in hushed voices and water-cooler whispers, but it makes no difference: people know. It’s real.

The doctor had told him baldly, without wasting words on sympathy. _We cannot recommend that you attempt to return to high-level play_. Oikawa had been grateful for that stiff professionalism: it hadn’t invited him to react emotionally, either. The facts were these: the stiffness in his knee was, most likely, permanent. The pain was not, but Oikawa had considered that a very second-place prize - and still does. He’s an athlete; he’s used to pain.

When Ushijima hears a few days later, he visits Oikawa out of what he can only assume stems from his unwavering sense of moral imperative, rather than any desire to talk about Oikawa’s feelings with him. This - along with the secondary fact that Ushijima is one of Oikawa’s oldest - and, depressingly, closest - friends, is what compels Oikawa to let him in when their eyes meet through the crack of the door - Ushijima’s calm, Oikawa’s narrow and red-lined. The fact that Ushijima is single-minded as all hell is also a factor: even if he doesn’t let Ushijima in immediately, he’ll wait outside until he does.

He’s holding a sports bag  - of course - that turns out to be full of clothes and oats. ‘How long are you staying?’ Oikawa asks, suspicious, through a haze of mild pain threatening to break through the painkillers barrier.  

‘I am not sure,’ Ushijima tells him. ‘Just until I am less concerned about your well-being.’

‘We’re going to be living together until we’re _70_ ,’ Oikawa moans, his head in his hands. Ushijima ignores him and rolls out his futon on the living room floor. It’s Shiratorizawa burgundy.  

‘It’s most unfortunate,’ Ushijima tells him, in his low, calm voice, as he tests the softness of his pillow. He doesn’t look as though anything unfortunate has happened to him in the last 25 years. Oikawa is filled with an irrational urge to stomp all over his futon.

Hmm,’ Oikawa says.

‘A real shame.’

‘Mnn,’ Oikawa says.

‘It will be different without you there. On the team.’

‘Yes,’ Oikawa says.

There’s a pause, as Ushijima studies him in the same way he watches the path of an unruly ball.

‘How are you feeling,’ Ushijima ventures, but his tone doesn’t suggest it’s a question. He knows. He wants to hear Oikawa say it. Ushijima likes certainties.

‘Fine,’ Oikawa says. It’s not really a lie, if by ‘fine’, he means ‘not dead’.

Ushijima nods slowly, but doesn’t make any comment.

Oikawa sighs and throws Ushijima a bone. ‘Ushiwaka-chan, it’s okay. Injuries happen. Go home.’

Ushijima gives him a slow, steady look, and des. ‘I don’t trust you,’ he informs Oikawa easily. There’s really no more weight behind the words than any of the others - Ushijima says everything with the same amount of honesty and consideration - but Oikawa still flinches.

Oh, whatever,’ Oikawa says wearily, all his remaining fight suddenly trickling out of him like blood from a wound. Whether the fight is with an opposing team, or Ushijima’s unwavering earnestness, or his damn knee, he feels that it’s over. This knowledge is the sea-bed, and he lies there amongst the silt, letting it lap at him.

‘I’m going to bed,’ he tells Ushijima, who is placing a little green plant on Oikawa’s countertop with a look of fondness Oikawa has never before seen on his square, stoic face.

‘It’s quarter past three in the afternoon,’ Ushijima informs him.

‘Right,’ Oikawa agrees. He doesn't think that's a necessary comment, but doesn’t feel like saying so. ‘Well, I guess… you’ll still be awake when I wake up, so. Goodnight. Good… afternoon.’ His head hurts. His knee hurts. His whole body hurts. He thinks he might vomit soon.

‘I will,’ Ushijima says. Oikawa believes it. Ushijima, when it’s necessary, seems to thrive purely on his own determination, with a superhuman ability to disregard such mortal needs as food and sleep. His serene ability to ignore his own biological imperatives is another reason why Ushijima will win, in the end, when the aliens come.

Once alone, he waits for the tears. It’s okay, he says to himself, no one will know. He waits for what feels like hours, but his eyes stay dry. He lies in the imported afternoon darkness, listening to the city sounds through his window. Shouts, car horns, laughter. He feels a sense of benevolence towards the people outside, but no sense that he belongs among them, anymore. Maybe they’re thinking about their lunch, or what to wear for a date, or whether they’ll get a promotion. They’re almost certainly not wrestling with a premature end to their careers.

He thinks he must have fallen asleep in the end, because when he next checks the time on his phone, it’s past midnight. When he stands, he presses all his weight onto his fucked-up knee, welcoming the fierce stab of pain

In the bathroom, he stares into the mirror, trying to find the pain. Surely, a cataclysmic gunshot like this would have split him wide open - surely, surely, there’s something to mark him as different from last week. But there isn’t: it’s just him. He has dark circles, and his lips are chapped and bleeding, but it’s just him. He opens the bathroom cabinet and holds his little strip of strong painkillers, mind curiously still as he stares at them.

He rips off two pill-pockets from the strip. He puts the rest back. Carefully.

He wanders into the living room. Ushijima is still there - as promised - and he’s reading something thick and old, with Cyrillic lettering. He looks exactly the same as he had done eight hours previously, too - but that’s less surprising, as his life hasn’t been skinned of all meaning.

‘I hope you got sufficient rest,’ Ushijima says.

Mmm,’ Oikawa says. His head is throbbing in time with his knee.

He doesn’t look at Ushijima as he gets a glass of water, but can feel his gaze.  

‘I’m still staying,’ Ushijima informs him.

I bet you are, Oikawa thinks darkly. And it won’t hurt when _you_ walk from the bathroom to the kitchen. His thoughts - unexpectedly - flash towards the stash of painkillers in his medicine cabinet. How many would it take? He turns the thought over like a pebble in his hand. He attempts to limps back into his bedroom, but Ushijima gently, firmly, catches him by the shoulder.

‘I’m going to make you something to eat,’ Ushijima says threateningly, once he’s helped Oikawa onto the sofa.

Oikawa isn’t hungry. He feels faintly nauseous at the thought of eating anything, but logically, he knows that even when bad things happen, bodies require fuel.

‘I’m not hungry,’ he says anyway, hearing the petulance in his voice.

‘Not important,’ Ushijima tells him grimly. ‘You look awful.’

‘We can’t all run on our own self-importance,’ Oikawa says snippily, before realising he kind of just agreed with Ushijima. He pauses, and looks at Ushijima more closely than the cursory glance he’d given him upon entering the room. He looks, actually, pretty shitty himself - his eyes sunken and red-lined, face strained. He's worried, Oikawa realises, in his own way. He feels a stab of guilt. ‘Okay,’ he says awkwardly, pacifyingly. ‘Sorry.’

‘Apologising - you _must_ be unwell,’ Ushijima mutters, a few of the lines easing regardless.

Oikawa can’t help laughing, as he does whenever Ushijima says something that might fall under the umbrella term ‘ _sassy’_. Ushijima glances over at him from his position at the counter, where he’s busying himself with various bowls and utensils, and smiles slightly. It’s small, but it still feels good to see it.

‘It’s only ramen,’ Ushijima tells him. ‘I couldn’t find anything else in your house. You really need to buy some food that normal people eat. Why do you have so much chichi dango?’

‘Says the man who brought three bags of oats and nothing else,’ Oikawa mutters.

‘A fine carbohydrate,’ Ushijima says.

‘Sure, for a horse,’ Oikawa says.

Ushijima wisely doesn’t respond to Oikawa’s bad-tempered sniping. He’s had ten years of learning the best way to deal with it, after all. Instead, he brings over a bowl of steaming noodles. It’s the first hot food he’s had in days.

The first few mouthfuls feel unnatural, as though the muscles he uses for eating are as shriveled and useless as the ones on his knee. But the more he eats, the less his stomach feels as though it’s full of rocks, and the more he feels that he could probably walk at least to the bathroom without needing to lean on Ushijima.

‘This isn’t bad,’ he says to Ushijima - surprised rather than impressed. ‘Thanks, Ushiwaka-chan.’

Ushijima nods at him easily. ‘It’s no hardship,’ he says. ‘You would have done the same for me.’

Oikawa knows that that’s true, but it’s still wearisome to hear. Throughout the course of their entire friendship, he can think of precisely zero non-volleyball-related occasions from which Ushijima would have benefited from Oikawa’s help. Ushijima is slow and steady and unstoppable, like a bulldozer. He always makes the right call, even if it takes him longer to make it. Unlike Oikawa, who has determinedly overworked himself since he was old enough to decide to, he works the sensible doctor-prescribed amount, and is still a near-perfect player. What the fuck gives? Oikawa thinks desperately, not for the first time, and definitely not the last.

‘I know,’ he says, uncharacteristic sincerity making him uncharacteristically awkward, ‘but still. Thanks.’

Ushijima inclines his head. It’s acceptance, and acknowledgement. Oikawa lets it soak into his skin - warm bathwater on wintery skin - and thinks again, thanks.

 

* * *

 

Ushijima stays, as he threatened to, for a long time. He stays so long that Oikawa stops counting the days, and secretly begins to enjoy his presence. Having someone else in the flat counteracts the loneliness, makes him feel less hopeless in the face of the scattered pieces of his life.

He even starts watering the plants that Ushijima sneaks in when he thinks Oikawa isn’t paying attention. He leaves notes for Ushijima when he does so: _Don’t overwater Oikawa Junior!!!! :):):) <3 <3 _. Oikawa Junior - a Cymbidium orchid - is his favourite of his new roommates - ranked much more highly than Ushijima, of course. The orchid blooms in winter, and Oikawa loves that idea. ‘They tolerate the cold well,’ Ushijima has told him. ‘They bloom even in most adverse conditions.’

Oikawa likes the idea so much that he steals the orchid for his bedside table. Ushijima doesn’t ask for it back. Oikawa thinks that secretly, he’s pleased - possibly even a little smug, if he is acquainted with such a secondary emotion - that Oikawa has bonded so much with a plant, after years of teasing him about his green fingers.  

As the days turn into weeks, Oikawa feels himself growing intermittently hot and restless with lack of direction, and frozen by it. He misses volleyball so much that sometimes it feels as though it’ll break him apart, bone by bone. Every day, when he hears the door slam, signalling Ushijima leaving for practice, he feels as though it slams right on his chest. When Ushijima comes back sweaty and red-faced after a particularly gruelling session, it’s all Oikawa can do to respond to him with intelligible words rather than one long high-pitched wail of envy.

But as they slowly shunt forwards, the weeks bring strange new soupy mixtures of strange new soupy emotions. Of course there’s still the sadness - the seabed - the guilt, the anger, the shame. The _embarrassment_ of it all. There’s very little good to be found in a career-ending injury, and a lot of bad - that’s just a fact.

But, then, sometimes, there are pockets of peace. Some cold nights Oikawa stands on his balcony, watching the city turn from blue to mauve to yellow-lit black, and feels a complete surety that down there is something that will change him again, put him back in his chrysalis, until he’s something new and different.

On these nights he feels that - perhaps, _maybe_ \- there’s _potentially_ more to life than volleyball. Those nights, he sleeps well, and dreams of blooming orchids rather than blood, muscle, a final _snap_ as he collapses to the floor. He thinks those nights are what it might mean to _accept_ his new reality.

Like a flickering lightbulb, he oscillates between a hopeful belief in the possible, and the unhappy knowledge of what’s happened to him. His surety in a future calling is hit and miss too, and sometimes he finds himself silently screaming to the sky above him to tell him what to do; please, _please_ tell him what to do.

And then, three weeks after Ushijima came to stay, on one of the balcony nights, Oikawa receives a text from someone whose name he’d never expected to hear again, and he wonders if the sky had heard him after all.  


**From: Iwaizumi Hajime** **  
****Sorry about your knee dude.  
**

Iwaizumi.

Huh, Oikawa thinks, carefully.

He ruminates over the name as he ruminates upon the best way to respond. Iwaizumi Hajime. Iwa-chan. He hasn’t thought of that name in a while.

He tries not to think about it during an unusually quiet dinner. Ushijima is not chatty by nature, and Oikawa’s been naturally subdued since his arrival anyway, but there is a heaviness to the quiet that has Ushijima’s gaze occasionally lifting from his book in consternation, frowning at what he sees on Oikawa’s face. They haven’t had such a quiet meal together since the first few days of Ushijima’s arrival, Oikawa knows that it’s putting them both on edge, but he can’t bring himself to explain.

He tries not to think about it in the shower. He tries not to think about it as he cleans his teeth and takes his painkillers.

Later, in bed, though, the darkness is a conduit for honesty, and he thinks about it.

They’d been fourteen, and Oikawa had been mercurial, and merciless in his ambition for greatness, and Iwaizumi had been an impediment to that greatness. Iwaizumi had fogged his senses, feeding a little bird in his chest that fluttered and sang whenever they were together - whenever Oikawa thought of him, really. It had to stop. Teenage feelings, Oikawa had told himself firmly, even as the bird sang.

He had been adamant that they’d pass, but he had still unceremoniously cut Iwaizumi out of his life when they’d gone to different high schools. It’s for the best, he had told himself, as the little bird had sputtered and died, leaving behind a rusty birdcage, swinging on empty hinges in his cavernous chest.   

He _knows_ it’s for the best that they don’t speak anymore. What else would it be? But reading Iwaizumi’s message - the first in years - he doesn’t _believe_ it.

So, in a burst of bravery and hope, he replies.  


**From: Oikawa Tooru** **  
****Iwa-chan!!! So good to hear from you <3 <3 It’s no big deal! If it means hearing from you it will have been worth it~~**  
  
**From: Iwaizumi Hajime** **  
** **I’m in Tokyo if you want to grab a beer**

 

Oikawa clutches at his chest. This is unexpected. He doesn’t like surprises.

In a mild panic, he shouts, ‘Ushiwaka-chan!’

Ushijima is next to him in a millisecond, holding a small yellow watering can in one hand, looking harassed. ‘Did you hurt yourself?

‘Only my _soul_ ,’ Oikawa wails.

‘Ah, good,’ Ushijima says, and goes to leave again.

‘What - no - not good,’ Oikawa splutters. ‘I know you have no feelings but can I ask you a question anyway?’

Ushijima narrows his eyes. ‘Is it about your soul?’

‘Well - kind of,’ Oikawa says.

‘No one can help you there,’ Ushijima says darkly.

‘The thing is,’ Oikawa continues over him loudly, ‘say you - had been in love with, uh, a volleyball, and it was the best volleyball you’d ever had, and you could hit the best spikes ever with it, and you thought you’d lost it forever, and then ten years later you found it again - what would you do?’

‘My spikes are not limited to one ball,’ Ushijima says very seriously. ‘I can hit them with any ball.’

‘Okay, thanks,’ Oikawa says, wishing for death.

‘You are welcome,’ Ushijima says, and strides back into the kitchen, clearly unaffected by the fact that the axes of rotation of Oikawa’s life have shifted by a few more degrees.

He’s on his own, then.

It’s for the best, it’s for the best. It’s for the best. His decisions have always been for the best. It was for the best that he practised too long and too hard every night, and it was for the best that he slept too little, but despite the fact that he made all of those choices, it can’t be for the best that he is 25 and empty, hungry in ways he couldn’t even begin to know how to describe. He’s 25 and his career is over. His life. After a lifetime of making the right decisions - denying himself - he’s ended up here, on the seabed, anyway.

For the first time in his life, he thinks very clearly, _fuck what’s best._

And he sends Iwaizumi the truth. And his hands don’t shake.

 

 **From: Oikawa Tooru** **  
** **I’d love that! :) :)**

 **  
** After he’s sent it, Oikawa is not actually _entirely_ sure that that _is_ true, but he thinks that even if he wouldn’t _love_ it, he does want it desperately, now that it’s on offer. Shit, can’t he have one good thing in his life, he thinks, with a burst of fierce self-righteousness. He can swap the knee for one evening with Iwaizumi; so be it.

After exchanging a few more messages to confirm the details, Oikawa finds himself standing in front of his wardrobe. He has the grim feeling that he’s about to enter some fray, that he must wear his strongest, most Iwaizumi-proof armour.

He decides that it would be inappropriate to dress too formally - it’s not a date, after all. But, then, he doesn’t want to dress too casually either, in case Iwaizumi takes it as a sign that Oikawa isn’t really excited by their reunion. What a minefield, Oikawa thinks grimly. He wonders if Iwaizumi is having a similar problem, but remembers how Iwaizumi dressed as a child, and then as a teenager, and thinks: yeah, probably not.

Thinking about Iwaizumi’s unabashed penchant for sports-casual in all situations makes Oikawa feel a little calmer. He manages to silence the more jittery corners of his mind. In the end, he picks a pale green sweater he gets a lot of compliments in, and some dark jeans that he knows makes his legs look inhumanly long. It’ll do, he thinks.

He pulls some oil through his hair for the first time in weeks, and that too, feels like armour.

He wanders into the living room, fiddling with his cuffs, feeling a little uncomfortable. It’s been weeks of sweatpants and oversized sweaters. Seeing the shape of his legs - thinner, he notices, with a twinge of mournfulness - is something he’s not used to being confronted with.

Ushijima perks up at the sight of him in real clothes. ‘Are you going out?’ he asks hopefully.

‘The - the cheek!’ Oikawa gasps. ‘Trying to get rid of me, in my own house! _You_ leave.’

He pauses, as Ushijima eyes him critically.

‘Okay fine,’ Oikawa admits, ‘I’m going out.’

Ushijima says, sounding too interested for Oikawa to be entirely comfortable with answering, ‘Who with?’

Oikawa scowls. ‘Never you mind, Ushiwaka,’ he says loftily.

‘Is it a _date_?’ Ushijima asks, eyes brightening.

‘No!’ Oikawa says, a bit too quickly, a bit too shrill. It’s not _not_ true, but he knows his speedy response at the very least gives Ushijima a clear window into the fact that Oikawa has some feelings about the situation that aren’t quite slotting into the hanging-out-with-friends category. For all that Oikawa likes to think of Ushijima as an unfeeling robot man, he knows that he’s really no slouch at reading people either. Annoyingly.

His phone beeps.

 

 **From: Iwaizumi Hajime** **  
****I’m on my way  
**

‘He’s on his way!’ Oikawa wails at Ushijima, in a mild panic.

Ushijima peels himself off the sofa and strides across to where Oikawa is standing, only in his socks on the wood. It doesn’t make him feel any less adolescent when Ushijima frowns, and rearranges Oikawa’s collar. ‘There,’ he says approvingly, sounding like a father watching his son leave for prom.

‘Thank you thank you bye,’ Oikawa shouts as he ties his boots, and bolts out of the door, stuffing his wallet in the back pocket of his jeans as he walks.

It’s only a short walk to their agreed destination, and he’s not worried about being late. He _is_ worried about arriving before he has a chance to compose himself, though, and to paint himself the worldly, attractive man that he wants Iwaizumi to see him as. He turns the corner to the street their izakaya is on, and suddenly -

Oikawa thinks, Oh.

He obviously hadn’t been expecting the same fourteen-year-old kid to have showed up - scraped knees, sports drink in hand - but he really hadn’t stopped to consider who he’d be meeting, either.

Iwaizumi looks like all his daydreams and night-dreams in one man: strong, tall (but still not as tall as him, Oikawa thinks, pleased), tanned, and with the exact same hair that he remembers in such bright technicolor. And even though - as Oikawa had expected - he’s just wearing a hoodie and jeans, he looks so perfect to Oikawa that he can’t help himself from swallowing a few times to calm the bird, rattling the bars of his ribcage for the first time in ten years.

It’s his Iwa-chan. The city holds its breath.

‘Oikawa!’ Iwaizumi yells from across the street. ‘Hey - idiot - over here!’ He’s grinning widely, and Oikawa wills himself not to collapse.

He jogs across the street and before Oikawa realises what’s happened he’s been enveloped in Iwaizumi’s thick, strong arms, and he can smell Iwaizumi’s deodorant and even _that’s_ the same, and he can feel Iwaizumi’s chest against his own, and the bird inside him is still, now - silent. Holding its breath too.

It’s for the best, he thinks, wobbly.

‘Iwa-chan - still the same - brute -’ Oikawa gasps from inside Iwaizumi’s hideously strong embrace.

‘Nah,’ Iwaizumi tells him cheerfully, ‘even more of a brute now.’

‘I’ve got friends who’ll miss me,’ Oikawa warns him.

‘You must have changed then,’ Iwaizumi says.

Oikawa gasps in mock affront. They stand in the street, staring at each other. Is he imagining it, or is Iwaizumi’s face a little pinker than the cold air warrants? Did he have to run to be on time, or is he flushed with something else?

Happiness renders Oikawa a little too honest and breathless, and he says ‘I _missed_ you, Iwa-chan,’ without thinking.

Iwaizumi smiles easily - he doesn’t know, Oikawa thinks guiltily - and says, ‘Yeah, me too, I guess.’

‘Drink?’ Oikawa suggests feebly, so he doesn’t have to think about Iwaizumi’s pink cheeks anymore.

‘Yes,’ Iwaizumi agrees - and again, Oikawa scrutinises him with his ex-setter eyes. Did he say ‘yes’ too quickly? Does he just want to get in from the cold, or does he really want to drink - with him? Alone?

They make their way inside, and Oikawa’s heart is beating so fast that it dims the lights around them as he sneaks surreptitious under-lash glances at Iwaizumi, unable to believe that the long-since-abandoned love of his life is here - in person, in glorious, tangible flesh.

When they sit down, and the hubbub around them blurs into meaningless noise, their gazes collide for a second, before bouncing off each other so that they both look down at the stained table.

‘How long has it been?’ Iwaizumi asks, running a hand through his hair.

Seven years and six months, Oikawa thinks, when you walked past my window. ‘Oh - a long time,’ he says vaguely.

‘Seven years, I think,’ Iwaizumi offers.

‘Is that so?’ Oikawa says.

Iwaizumi is watching him with a face that’s two parts fond, and one part something Oikawa can’t put his finger on. ‘Not still the over-analyser, then?’ he asks.

Oh, God, if only he knew. ‘Oh,’ Oikawa says, awkward. ‘Some… habits are hard to break, Iwa-chan.’

‘I hear that,’ Iwaizumi agrees, and raises his glass. Oikawa raises his too - they clink them together and take a drink.

‘Hey, I know I said this already, but I was really sorry to hear about your knee,’ Iwaizumi says suddenly. Oikawa swallows and slides his eyes from Iwaizumi’s. He does feel better about the knee overall, but he still struggles to talk about it. He especially doesn’t want to talk about it tonight, with Iwaizumi. He wants to leave the knee at home, tonight.

‘It’s fine,’ he lies, because explaining all this to Iwaizumi on their first real reunion since they were teenagers, he thinks, would be a bit of an overload.

Iwaizumi leans over the table and flicks his forehead. ‘You don’t have to say that,’ he says, frowning. ‘If you’re even half the volleyball nut you were in school I thought you might have thrown yourself from the nearest tall building. Of course it’s not fine. It’s shit.’

Iwaizumi puts it so guilelessly and frankly that Oikawa is shocked into laughter. ‘Well - not yet. Still alive.’ He throws a peace sign in Iwaizumi’s direction.

Iwaizumi is watching him with the same expression that Oikawa hadn’t been able to decode. He can’t remember whether he’d ever found Iwaizumi so unreadable before, and it puts him on edge. ‘I’m glad,’ is all he says in the end, and it sounds honest. Oikawa is struck again with the apparent ease at which Iwaizumi tells the truth.

‘It has been shit though,’ Oikawa admits, Iwaizumi’s honesty forcing him to give up some of his pretence. It might be the first time he’s said it out loud.

Iwaizumi makes an understanding, sympathetic noise. Oikawa doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want Iwaizumi to think less of him; he wants Iwaizumi to think of him as his equal. He digs a thumb into the side of his knee until the pain clears his nerves.

‘I don’t think you ever said what you’re doing here,’ Oikawa says, steering the subject back to the acceptable.

‘I don’t suppose I did,’ Iwaizumi agrees, seemingly deciding not to push the knee angle. Even as a child he had known when to push Oikawa and when to pull back - and the innate understanding of Oikawa’s moods seems to not have left him in the near-ten years of separation ‘I - uh. I moved here a few months ago.’

‘You _live_ here?’ Oikawa says, thunderstruck.

Iwaizumi laughs. ‘Yeah, along with like, half of our class. It’s no big deal.’

‘You never said!’ Oikawa says, outraged, pointing a finger at him. ‘We could have been best friends again by now! We could have gone beetle-hunting!’

‘Maybe I have other beetle partners now,’ Iwaizumi says mercilessly. Oikawa clutches his heart in performative despair. Iwaizumi smiles, but doesn’t quite meet Oikawa’s eyes. ‘I dunno, we haven’t spoken in years. You kind of shut me down whenever I tried.’ He doesn’t sound bitter in the slightest. He just sounds as though he’s talking about something as simple as the weather. The bird inside Oikawa flutters in anguish. He doesn’t know - he has no idea -

‘Why’d you move here?’ Oikawa asks, because he doesn’t know how to respond to the rest of it without revealing too much. Keep it light, he tells himself, even as his mind bows and frays under its own heaviness.

Iwaizumi looks faintly uncomfortable for the first time all evening. ‘I broke up with someone,’ he says.

Oikawa hadn’t been expecting that response. ‘She didn’t measure up to Oikawa-san, I bet,’ he says, meaning it as a joke, but hears underlying breathlessness in his voice that he hopes Iwaizumi can’t.

‘He,’ Iwaizumi says blithely.

Oikawa stares at him, open-mouthed.

‘It was a he,’ Iwaizumi says again, non-plussed, evidently not realising the asteroidal crater this information would leave in Oikawa’s life.

‘You’re - you like _men_?’ Oikawa hisses, flabbergasted.

Iwaizumi frowns at him. ‘Is that a problem?’

Oikawa realises - too late - that his shock could easily be read as disgust. ‘No!’ he gasps, with feeling, ‘God, no, of course not. I just had - no idea -’

‘I thought you knew!’ Iwaizumi says, beginning to look a little flustered too. Good, Oikawa thinks, he shouldn’t be the only one clinging onto his sanity with one finger.

‘ _How would I have known_?’

‘Shit, I don’t know! You read people! You know what they’re thinking!’

‘Not like _that_!’

‘I thought you knew, and that was why you stopped talking to me,’ Iwaizumi says more quietly.

Oikawa swallows, because in a matter of seconds the conversation has gone from standing on solid earth to barely frozen lake ice, just before the thaw. Are we going to talk about it? he thinks. Is this the moment?

‘Iwa-’ Oikawa begins, but he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. ‘It wasn’t that.’

‘Oh, you admit it?’ Iwaizumi says, sounding surprised. ‘I thought you’d be all like “ _oh, Iwa-chan, I was just so buuuusyyyyy at my fancy powerhouse schoooool with my fancy ace who looks like a coooow_ ”.’ He says the latter in a high-pitched voice that Oikawa knows sounds absolutely nothing like his voice. He kicks Iwaizumi under the table.

He isn’t wrong about Ushijima’s bovine features, though, Oikawa thinks regretfully.

‘No - I - there was a reason.’

‘Was it my fault?’ Iwaizumi asks, and again, there’s no suggestion of resentment there - just a curiosity. He takes another long swig.

‘Uh, no,’ Oikawa says, and drinks too.

‘Well what was it? Surely it doesn’t matter now?’

Oikawa wishes that it didn’t matter, that the situation was any different, but he knows that to him, it does still matter. But he feels as though he owes Iwaizumi some sort of answer - some half-truth.  
  
‘I - this is going to sound really stupid,’ Oikawa mutters, ‘but I had a huge crush on you in junior school.’ Past tense, Oikawa thinks, proud.

Iwaizumi gazes across at Oikawa - leaning back in his chair, arms folded, wary. ‘So you ghosted me. Logical.’

‘Well, yes,’ Oikawa says.

‘You’re an idiot,’ Iwaizumi says with feeling. ‘Why?’

Oikawa can’t tell him why. He can’t explain the bird in his chest, the empty cage. He doesn’t understand why things like Iwaizumi’s eye crinkles make him want to rip out his heart and present it to Iwaizumi in a red gift-wrapped box, or why even as a teenager he just wanted Iwaizumi’s arms around him, all the time, forever. It’s for the best. ‘You smelled too good,’ is what he says in the end. It’s not a lie, either: he will remember Iwaizumi’s smell until the day he dies.

Iwaizumi snorts, which Oikawa thinks is a bit unfair, considering he’d just revealed a significant portion of his great pain. ‘I _smelled_ too good?’

‘Yeah. Kind of lemony.’

‘How do I smell tonight?’

Oikawa’s gaze flicks up to Iwaizumi’s face, shocked into a brief silence. Iwaizumi’s meeting his gaze steadily, but he can see his eyes are a little darker, and his cheeks, too.

‘Kind of… lemony,’ Oikawa manages. This can’t be the moment, he thinks. This is too stupid to be the moment.

‘Do you… still like lemons?’ Iwaizumi suddenly laughs and runs a hand through his hair again. ‘Okay, no, shit, forget the lemons. We’re adults. Fuck. Do you still like how I smell?’

‘What are you asking?’ Oikawa whispers, feeling a rattling mixture of numbness and urgency at what he thinks he’s hearing. He doesn’t dare to believe it - after ten years, he thinks to dare wrongly might kill him stone dead.

‘Oh, I think you know.’ Iwaizumi grimaces. ‘I mean, I never know, with you, because it always ends up in _lemons_ or some shit, but if _you’re_ offering what _I_ think you’re offering -’

‘No, no,’ Oikawa cuts him off, feeling desperation overwhelm him, ‘no, you have to be clear. I don’t want to guess. I’m only offering - what you want offered.’

Iwaizumi blushes, and this time Oikawa is sure it’s a real blush rather than a reaction to the weather. ‘I think you’re offering us a chance to see where this goes.’

‘No!’ Oikawa snaps, feeling that he’s beginning to lose his grip on the conversation, and certainly any chance of looking like the aloof, handsome social butterfly he’d been aiming for. ‘No, not “where this goes”, I want specificies.’

Iwaizumi is leaning forward now, intent. ‘Okay, fine. How’s this: I want you back. I miss you. I obviously liked you too. _Like_ you. Shit, I don’t know how more specific I can be. Want me to propose?’

Oikawa eyes him mulishly and crosses his arms. ‘With a nice ring,’ he says. ‘But not diamond, because their prices are artificially inflated.’ Iwaizumi laughs out loud.

‘Still so demanding,’ Iwaizumi says, pretending to wipe sweat from his forehead, but he’s smiling all over his face - underneath his eyes are little tissue paper crinkles that weren’t there ten years ago. It’s proof that Iwaizumi has changed in their years apart, and it hurts worse than a needle. He doesn’t want to miss any more changes. He wants to bring the changes.

‘Okay, okay, that’s specific enough,’ Oikawa says grudgingly, even though it isn’t, and what he really wants is for Iwaizumi to provide him with a suggested itinerary of the next five years together. But the difference now is that he recognises that _some_ of his ideas - _some_ of his desires - might actually be unhealthy after all. Sometimes he can separate the yolk from the white in a way that he couldn’t as a teenager. He’s not convinced, but he allows himself to consider the idea that maybe Iwaizumi is something he can have after all. In the smoky izakaya, between other people’s conversations, he lets himself dream for a precious second.

‘Great,’ says Iwaizumi, ‘what do I win?’

‘You win,’ Oikawa says, ‘the grand prize.’

‘Is it you?’ Iwaizumi asks.

 

‘The one and only,’ Oikawa agrees, throwing his arms wide.

‘Hm. Can I swap it for a car?’

But he’s leaning back and laughing even as Oikawa makes an indignant squawk and kicks at him, suddenly shaking too much to even make contact with Iwaizumi’s ankle. Shaking from head to toe, really, because in a flood he’s remembering all the misery of the past ten years - all the times he’s dropped to the floor because Iwaizumi walked past the window and his heart started trying to escape from his mouth, and all the times he’s eaten with different friends at _their_ spots, and all the times he’s woken up in the dark, aching, screaming into his pillow afterwards.

He knows he’s crying. He isn’t sure it really matters.

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes,but his eyes look a little damp too, and his voice isn’t very steady either when he says, ‘Okay, lightweight, take me home.’

 

* * *

 

 

Oikawa doesn’t remember anything from the journey home. He can’t remember the colour of the sky, or whether he saw any birds, or whether he was cold, or hot, or just right. All he knows is that he walked home with Iwaizumi, and that Iwaizumi’s hip kept bumping his own, as though after ten years of Oikawa-enforced distance, neither of them want to keep it up anymore.

Oikawa knows he’s done with trying to keep Iwaizumi away from him. He gave it his best shot - and for a while, it seemed like he’d won - but he’d never stood a chance, had he? He thinks it might hurt as much as the knee, in the long run, but he doesn’t care anymore. It’s over, and he lost. It’s the sweetest defeat he’s ever experienced, he thinks, as he unlocks his front door, and pulls Iwaizumi inside by the hand.

‘Hello,’ Ushijima says, wearing an apron, and holding a wooden spoon. The sight of him dampens his burgeoning lust more effectively than a cold shower, and it’s much less welcome.

Oikawa drops Iwaizumi’s hand.

Iwaizumi is opening and closing his mouth in a horror that Oikawa shares, but he still sniggers at the look on his face. Iwaizumi turns to scowl at him.

‘Ushiwaka-chan!’ Oikawa says, in an attempt to quell the rising hysteria. ‘Still here!’

Of course,’ Ushijima says. ‘Hello, Iwaizumi-san.’

‘How do you even-’ Oikawa begins, but stops. They’d played Aoba Johsai a few times. Ushijima has an inhumanly powerful memory for anything pertaining to volleyball.

Iwaizumi is looking at Ushijima with the barely concealed rage of a man who’s been thoroughly cockblocked, but Ushijima looks untroubled.

Oikawa knows Ushijima can’t take hints. He knows he’s going to have to be horribly _clear_ . ‘Ushiwaka-chan,’ he begins, ‘I’m sorry to be so unforgivably rude, but Iwaizumi-san and I _were going_ to have sex.’

‘I will not interfere,’ Ushijima says. Behind him, he hears Iwaizumi snort.

‘No, oh my God,’ Oikawa says, hysteria rising again. ‘Please, Ushiwaka, give us a few hours. Come back tomorrow. Pretend this conversation never happened. I mean, I know I will be pretending that.’

‘Me too,’ Iwaizumi adds helpfully from somewhere behind him.

Ushijima nods. ‘You’ll be fine with Iwaizumi-san,’ he says, almost to himself. ‘I will return tomorrow. Please enjoy yourselves. There are snacks on the counter.’ He bows slightly as he leaves.

Iwaizumi is gaping at the door. It’s an expression that Oikawa has seen quite a few times after Ushijima introductions. ‘Did he even take anything with him?’

‘He’s not like you and me,’ Oikawa tells him grimly. ‘I think he’ll just run solidly for like, 12 hours. Or like, dancing. I don’t know. He’s a mystery.’

‘12 hours,’ Iwaizumi repeats, raising an eyebrow. ‘Ambitious.’

Oikawa flushes. They’re very alone, in the very quiet flat.

They’re very alone when Iwaizumi crosses the room to him and kisses him squarely on the mouth, no hesitation, no overthinking. Just that: a kiss. _Just_ a kiss, Oikawa thinks, and suddenly the air is too hot to breathe.

‘I stopped talking to you because I was in love with you,’ he blurts out, needing to lay it all out, finally, like a post-mortem on cement. It can’t be just a kiss. It can’t be Iwaizumi for an evening - a day, or two, maybe, with his body in his bed but his heart somewhere else. He’s too worn out for anything but everything. If Iwaizumi doesn’t want to deal with his little, shriveled heart, Oikawa needs to know before the kissing turns into touching into gasping and writhing. Cut the string now, before it goes too far. ‘It wasn’t a crush. I’m sorry. I can’t do this if you don’t get it.’

‘You’re literally the stupidest person I’ve ever met,’ Iwaizumi says, still very close.

‘Do you understand now?’ Oikawa gasps. ‘Not just this, not just sex, if that’s what you want you need to leave. I can’t - again -’

‘Oh my God, if this was just a _sex thing_ I could get it so much easier from someone who isn’t _clinically insane_ ,’ Iwaizumi hisses at him. Oikawa opens his mouth to argue, but, well. ‘When did it sound like I just wanted sex? I said I wanted you back.’

‘...Sex as well though?’ Oikawa asks, just to check.

‘Well, yeah,’ Iwaizumi says. ‘Naturally.’

‘Even though my knee doesn’t work?’

‘Does everything else work?’

‘Everything else is in perfect condition,’ Oikawa says, trying not to sound bitter about it. Iwaizumi’s gaze softens.

Iwaizumi sighs and flops onto Oikawa’s best sofa. ‘I don’t know how to make this clear to you, because I think you’re actually more fucking crazy than when you were fifteen, but yeah. I’m not fucking around. I didn’t have to text you. I didn’t have to come here.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘The boy I was dating looked like you.’

‘Like, a hotter version, or -’

‘No, Shittykawa!’ Iwaizumi says, incensed, ‘a crappy version. It wasn’t you. I kept thinking “this isn’t how I felt about Oikawa”. For six whole months. Until I moved here. Because I knew you were here.’

‘Oh,’ Oikawa says faintly.

‘Yeah,’ Iwaizumi says gruffly. ‘It was - you know, the same for me.’

Oikawa stares, open-mouthed, in a way that he knows isn’t attractive at all, but he needs to take a moment to process what Iwaizumi is telling him, in his gloriously simple way. _It was the same for me._

‘I’m sorry,’ Oikawa whispers.

‘I’m sorry I let you leave,’ Iwaizumi says, with a shaky laugh, but Oikawa knows that Iwaizumi tried - he hadn’t let Oikawa leave; Oikawa had just left. ‘Sorry you thought you were alone in it.’

‘I wouldn’t have known what to do with that anyway,’ Oikawa admits.

‘You wouldn’t have been on your own with it,’ Iwaizumi repeats. ‘Shit, have you not learned that by now? You don’t have to be the only one doing everything?’

Oikawa shrugs one shoulder in a non-answer, but really, he thinks he’s learning, finally. He thinks of Ushijima showing up on his doorstep with one bag and several plants, and of the countless get well soon cards from his ex-teammates, and the brief phone call from Kageyama - his replacement - during which Oikawa could hear his voice trembling in fear even as he tried to be strong and respectful.

He thinks of Iwaizumi, locked out in the dark and the cold, while Oikawa made the decisions for both of them. He looks at Iwaizumi’s face, and sees - unbelievably - nothing but hope there. He can’t understand the goodness of this man in front of him.

‘Okay,’ Iwaizumi says, ‘well, I’m going to kiss you now, so can you shut up for a bit.’

‘Them’s fighting words,’ says Oikawa, raising his fists.

Iwaizumi rolls his eyes. He lifts Oikawa up onto the countertop - his arms! Oikawa thinks in breathless glee - and settles between his thighs, sturdy and warm. Oikawa swallows.

He has to bend his neck a little to reach Iwaizumi’s mouth, but Iwaizumi pulls him down by his collar into a kiss that’s unexpectedly gentle. The gentleness of it makes Oikawa believe for the first time that Iwaizumi had missed him too - that he’d been waiting for a lifeline too, but one that had never come

‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ Iwaizumi mumbles, eyes fixed on Oikawa’s mouth, and head staying close.

‘I’m reformed,’ Oikawa promises.

Oikawa leans down to kiss him again. It’s less gentle, because despite appearances, Oikawa is less gentle than Iwaizumi - sharper and pricklier, and evidently more likely to make terrible decisions that reverberate for years. Kissing Iwaizumi isn’t a terrible decision, though - it’s one of the best he’s ever made. When Iwaizumi licks at Oikawa’s lips he’s very glad his weight is settled on top of the counter, because he’s not sure he’d be able to keep himself upright.

Iwaizumi - wonderful, strong Iwaizumi - has no problem keeping himself upright, though, albeit he’s leaning heavily against Oikawa. He kisses and kisses, as though _that’s_ the thing keeping him standing.

He stops craning his neck to kiss Oikawa’s mouth, and moves on to mouth at his neck, sucking bruises into his skin - the same berry colour as their Shiratorizawa red, their volleyball bruises - but smaller, more intimate, not something to compete over in locker rooms.

He can feel Iwaizumi hard against him as they kiss, and he squirms, whining at the back of his throat, into Iwaizumi’s warm, wet mouth.

‘It’s okay, Tooru,’ Iwaizumi says, his voice rough and low - and the sound of his given name in that gravel-voice is going to stick with him forever. ‘Want to do it here?’

Oikawa shakes his head. ‘Ushijima’s snacks. He’ll know.’

‘God, don’t say his name,’ Iwaizumi mutters, as he kisses Oikawa again, ‘it might summon him.’

Oikawa giggles - he will claim a more manly sound, later - and kisses Iwaizumi again, again. He doesn’t want to stop, not when he finally knows how it feels.

‘Bed,’ Oikawa gasps, when Iwaizumi sucks at a particularly sensitive spot on his neck, ‘fuck, now, God -’

‘It’s your house, you lead,’ Iwaizumi says, muffled, into his shoulder.

Oikawa pulls away reluctantly, and drags him into the bedroom.

Once they’re both inside, there’s a moment of quiet. They look at each other, then away, quickly. They’re standing on the precipice: their relationship will be divided into before and after this night. Oikawa doesn’t want to make the first move; he doesn’t want to snap the tension. He stands at the foot of his bed, feeling too big for his room.

So it’s Iwaizumi who closes the gap between them - and hasn’t it always been? Now, and always, as long as Oikawa lets him.

‘Stop thinking,’ Iwaizumi says, and flicks his forehead.

‘Make me,’ Oikawa says.

Iwaizumi smiles, slow like dripping honey, and rolls up his sleeves like the asshole he is.

‘Gross,’ Oikawa says hoarsely, swallowing. He gives up on trying to preserve any kind of moment when Iwaizumi is around, and lowers himself to sit on the bed. That second when his weight transfers to the bed is still painful, and Iwaizumi can see it, because he frowns slightly.

‘Is this going to make it worse?’

‘No,’ Oikawa says shortly, the stab of pain and the knowledge that he’s so close to really, really _having_ Iwaizumi combining to make him terse and peevish, _‘not_ fucking me will make it worse, stupid -’

‘I’m just checking!’ Iwaizumi snaps, but he follows Oikawa onto the bed, leaning over him until Oikawa is lying flat on his back, and kisses him again. Oikawa relaxes into it, bringing a hand up to caress Iwaizumi’s neck, hair, the parts of his back that he can reach underneath his shirt.

Iwaizumi pulls away to pull off his own t-shirt. He throws it without watching it land, because he’s already started on Oikawa’s buttons. His fingers are shaking, Oikawa notices, surprised. Oikawa, desperate to feel his skin on Iwaizumi’s, brings his hands up to help Iwaizumi with the buttons, but Iwaizumi slaps them away. ‘Let me,’ he murmurs, ‘I want to.’

Oikawa lies back, lets Iwaizumi work at his buttons until he pulls open the two sides of his shirt, exposing him from collarbone to hip. Iwaizumi makes a pleased noise and settles back down next to him, pulling him into a deep, slow kiss that makes Oikawa feel as though all his bones are made of oven-warmed butter.

‘Closer,’ Iwaizumi mumbles into his lips, and Oikawa thinks, yes, that, yes.

He shuffles in as close as he can, so he’s leaning over Iwaizumi, and he sees - and feels - Iwaizumi’s swallow as his thigh grinds against his crotch. ‘Like that?’ Oikawa murmurs innocently, and Iwaizumi groans, letting his head fall back.

‘When you said “fuck me”,’ Iwaizumi begins, before choking on a gasp, and grinding more firmly against Oikawa’s hip. ‘Ah - when you - did you mean “fuck me” or -?

‘I mean - whatever you want -’ Oikawa gasps, thoughts popping like bubble gum at the feel of Iwaizumi against him.

‘I want to suck you,’ Iwaizumi grates out, ‘I can’t be bothered with all the other stuff - too long, want you now -’

‘Yes, shit, of course,’ Oikawa babbles.

Iwaizumi makes a strangled noise at Oikawa’s desperate agreement. He gets a hand between them and massages Oikawa’s cock through his jeans as he sucks on his neck - the pleasure surrounds him like a blanket. The bird in his chest has never sung so beautifully, or so loudly.

Iwaizumi unbuttons his jeans with one hand - smooth, Iwa-chan, Oikawa thinks - and caresses him through the one layer of fabric still keeping them apart - an old pair of boxers that Oikawa absolutely wouldn’t have worn had he known they'd end up here.

Under Iwaizumi’s big hand, Oikawa lets his head fall back against the pillow with an urgent little whimper. Iwaizumi needs to do _something or he’s going to die_ -

‘I’ve got you, Tooru,’ Iwaizumi mutters in response, and crawls down his body. He pulls Oikawa’s tatty boxers off - Oikawa lifts his hips to help - and _shit_ , he’s about to do it, Oikawa thinks wildly, he’s really going to do it, it’s happening.

It happens. Iwaizumi licks the head lightly, teasingly, cat-like. Oikawa bites his fingers in an attempt to keep quiet, but it’s a lost cause. When Iwaizumi takes the head into his mouth and sucks at it - hard - Oikawa can’t help keening and arching against the bed. He shifts his hips restlessly, trying to resist the urge to direct them deeper into Iwaizumi’s mouth.

‘Pushy,’ Iwaizumi chides lowly, pulling back, smirking.

‘Fuck you, suck it,’ Oikawa gasps, ‘I need to come - in your _mouth_ , _please let me -’_

‘Fuck, yes,’ Iwaizumi growls, and his voice sounds low and shaky again. Oikawa can see his hips jerk against the mattress and he whines again, wanting to be able to feel them jerk against _him_.

Oikawa loses control of his own hips - he knows they’re moving more than he means them to, helplessly trying to get his cock as deep into Iwaizumi’s mouth as he can, but Iwaizumi doesn’t seem to mind - if anything, he’s sucking harder, and Oikawa can feel little cut-off moans and gasps around his cock when he moves his hips particularly sharply. He knows he’s going to come soon - his thighs are trembling and there’s a rushing noise in his ears - and warns him with a garbled ‘Iwa - I’m -’

Iwaizumi groans around him and does not pull away. Oikawa sobs and gasps over and over as he comes and comes, harder than he thinks he ever has. Iwaizumi keeps sucking gently until over-sensitivity makes Oikawa twitchy.

‘Holy shit,’ Oikawa says blissfully. ‘Come here -’

‘You sounded fucking amazing,’ Iwaizumi grunts, crawling up the bed until he’s lying next to Oikawa.  
  
Oikawa flushes. ‘Felt amazing,’ he says, and although he doesn’t know why, he’s embarrassed to say it out loud, now that it’s over.

Iwaizumi kisses him again - deeper, hungrier - and Oikawa knows Iwaizumi hasn’t come yet, can feel the tension in his lips, nearly vibrating against him.

‘What do you want?’ he asks breathlessly when he pulls back, keeping his eyes on Iwaizumi’s swollen lips.

‘Oh fuck,’ Iwaizumi mutters, and his breathing’s coming faster, ‘this is going to sound - do you - could you - finger - me?’

Whatever Iwaizumi thought this suggestion would sound like is immaterial, because to Oikawa, it sounds like the best idea of all time. He is pretty sure didn’t know true joy until now, having Iwaizumi in his bed, asking to be fingered. It doesn’t feel real, but he can feel Iwaizumi’s sweaty hand against him, smell the sex, hear Iwaizumi’s laboured breathing - a dream couldn’t be so detailed, could it?

‘I would _love_ that,’ Oikawa bursts out, stumbling over his words with feverish honesty, and doesn’t miss Iwaizumi’s eyes fluttering shut for a minute in relief.

He reaches over to the drawer and pulls out a tube of barely-used lube that he’d bought just before his knee decided to give up its side of the bargain. Iwaizumi swallows when he sees what Oikawa’s holding.

‘Okay?’ Oikawa asks, just to be sure.

‘I would be if you’d hurry the fuck up,’ Iwaizumi says, voice shakier than ever, and Oikawa laughs out loud - not from humour, but from the sheer pleasure of it all.

‘Now who’s pushy,’ Oikawa says, grinning wide and fierce as he coats his fingers. Iwaizumi’s gaze flickers back and forth between Oikawa’s face and his fingers - he looks overwhelmed. Oikawa understands.

‘Still yo- _oh_.’ Iwaizumi cuts himself off with a breathless whisper when Oikawa’s fingers brush against his hole - gently, at first, just a caress. A sweet promise, a tease.

‘Want it?’ Oikawa murmurs.

‘Nnn,’ Iwaizumi manages in response, and his hands have come up to cover his reddening face.

Oikawa pushes past the resistance with one finger, gently - he doesn’t know how often Iwaizumi does this, after all - and waits for a moment for Iwaizumi to adjust to it.

Going by the desperation on Iwaizumi’s face, adjusting isn’t a problem. He’s moving his hips in tiny, incremental motions on Oikawa’s finger, and his chest is heaving harder than it did when they ran drills.

‘More,’ Iwaizumi demands breathlessly.

Oikawa complies. He rubs a second finger around the rim, and pushes gently until it’s as deep as the first one. He bends them at the knuckle slightly, waiting for the lightbulb moment, until -

Iwaizumi’s hips jerk upwards with real force, and he gasps so loud that Oikawa momentarily wonders if he’s done something wrong. But no: his cock is leaking a slow, clear fluid, and when he catches Iwaizumi’s eye he knows he’s doing everything perfectly.

‘There?’ he murmurs. He knows, but he wants Iwaizumi to tell him.

‘Yes,’ Iwaizumi hisses, head thrown back and eyes clenched shut. _‘Shit_.’

As he rubs and scissors his fingers, Iwaizumi’s face grows ever more glazed, breaths coming more and more gaspy, and when Oikawa crooks his fingers repeatedly against his prostate he makes a strangled keening noise and arches violently back into Oikawa’s hand. Oikawa swallows. This man, he thinks helplessly, for the thousandth time that night.

‘Close?’

‘Yes - _fuck_ -’ Iwaizumi breaks off, keening, as he clenches around Oikawa’s fingers. Oikawa watches, rapt, as Iwaizumi trembles and gasps his way through what Oikawa thinks - hopefully - must be an intense orgasm, rhythmically squeezing the fingers still inside him.

That’s that then, Oikawa thinks.

‘God,’ Iwaizumi croaks, ‘come here -’ He scrabbles at Oikawa’s shoulders to pull him in for a kiss. Oikawa doesn’t need much pulling; he goes willingly and blissfully, and fixes their mouths together. Sex is nice, obviously, but the afterglow is one of Oikawa’s favourite parts of the whole thing - when the tension is loosened, and he can kiss his partner slow and unhurried as the sun sets, or rises, or shines.

‘Still got the magic setter hands,’ Iwaizumi says breathlessly.

‘That is _not_ how I played volleyball,’ Oikawa responds primly, revelling in Iwaizumi’s shaky laughter even as he pulls Oikawa impossibly closer, legs tangling like a game of cat’s cradle.

‘We should clean up,’ Oikawa says, after revelling in the afterglow for long enough that he now just feels a bit sticky, and is thinking about how filthy his fingers are.

‘No,’ Iwaizumi says, and rolls over, closing his eyes beatifically.

‘I know you're not asleep,’ Oikawa says, poking him in the ribs.

‘I _am,’_ Iwaizumi says, squeezing his eyes even more insistently closed.

Oikawa rolls his eyes with a fresh surge of overwhelming fondness and pads to the bathroom on his own.

He catches sight of himself in the mirror as he washes his hands, and again, as he gazes at his flushed, pink face, is struck by the thought: where’s the earthquake? Where’s Iwaizumi? He wishes, again, for his life to be more visible on his face - for there to be some sort of marker for these kinds of days. The kinds of days that last beyond their allotted 24 hours.

When he heads back into the bedroom, he’s hit by the smell of sex, and it feels like the proof he needs. He stares at Iwaizumi in his bed, trying to quantify the earthquake, but falling so, so, short. He slips back into bed, back to Iwaizumi,who he thinks might actually be asleep now, breathing slow and even. He’s warm. Oikawa can’t quite believe in his existence, but he knows - he _knows_ \- that it’s real, despite his mind’s careful refusal to see it. His mind is unable to let the final walls fall - to let him really _feel_ Iwaizumi’s presence. This whole evening - it’s an unreal moment sandwiched between the mundanities of real life. Iwaizumi will leave again, he thinks. He feels as though it’s already happened, somehow.

Iwaizumi opens one baleful eye, and says, ‘Stop staring at me, Shittykawa.’ He looks beautiful in the almost darkness.

‘When are you going home?’ Oikawa asks, unable to stop himself.

Iwaizumi - understandably - looks surprised, and props himself up on an elbow. ‘I don’t know,’ he says ‘When you kick me out, I guess. Is that now?’

‘No!’ Oikawa says hurriedly. ‘No, I… don’t want you to go again.’

Iwaizumi props himself up on both elbows. ‘You were the one who left,’ he says, ‘and I’m not like that. If I want something I just have it.’

Oikawa laughs, but it sounds a little broken. ‘Yeah. You were always the brave one.’

‘No,’ Iwaizumi rebuffs his assertion gently, ‘you’re brave too, just about the wrong things.’

Oikawa’s not sure that’s true - he doesn’t think it’s bravery that led him to cut Iwaizumi free. He thinks it might be the exact opposite, in fact. But now? It’s not bravery, either, that wants Iwaizumi to stay. It’s just the tiredness after battle, the hunger at the end of a long day. He doesn’t want to stop it anymore.

‘Can you stay tonight?’ Oikawa asks, knowing he sounds needy, and clingy, and everything he wants to not be.

‘I can stay tonight,’ Iwaizumi says. ‘And even when I leave, I’ll come back, if you’ll let me.’

‘Yes,’ is all Oikawa can manage through his suddenly-too-tight throat, but he thinks it’s enough, because he can see a dampness at Iwaizumi’s eyes that he doesn’t think is an illusion of the dark room.

‘It’s gonna be okay, idiot,’ Iwaizumi says gruffly, and Oikawa thinks, is it okay if I believe that - just this once, can I believe it?

‘Hmm,’ he says, but Iwaizumi isn’t satisfied, and grabs Oikawa’s shoulders so he can kiss him.

‘I mean it,’ he growls, ‘everything is fucking fine and it’s gonna continue to be fucking fine so just come out of your damn head, with me.’

Oikawa groans and buries his head into Iwaizumi’s shoulder. He so badly wants to.

Maybe it won't happen all at once, but he thinks here might be a good start: the two of them, together again, ready to re-tie their red strings.

‘Okay,’ he tells Iwaizumi, and lies down next to him. Yes, he thinks, it’s a good start.

That night, he dreams of the seabed, his old resting place. He dreams of the silt, the muddy water, filling his throat.

And then he dreams of rising - kicking against the sand, so it swirls around him, and he dreams of swimming upwards, fierce and strong, and then - he breaks the surface, white pearls splashing, and he feels the sun on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @ weirdmilk


End file.
